How I construct hypergraphs from JSON-LD knowledge graph data with simple examples

Hypergraphs are the exotic cousins of traditional knowledge graphs. Let’s look closer at using directed hypergraphs to represent undirected hypergraphs. Specifically, we’ll learn how to express them using schema language, work on them using the JSON-LD format and use a system to process them. Why use directed hypergraphs? Because things are easier to express using them!

Base artwork generated with AI DALLE-3, then modified by the author.

The image below from Wikipedia shows a Venn diagram of an undirected hypergraph which can be represented as sets of triples in a hypergraph representation. We’ll use a directed hypergraph as a base for encoding such undirected hyperedges. We will use this diagram and to make the examples a bit more real, we will be using blogposts as example members of the hypergraph, a simplified blog collection for v₁ through v₇.

What is the difference between a hypergraph and a knowledge graph?

I personally like JSON-LD a lot as it is an easy mechanism to serialize hypergraphs for transportation. We will use that format as our descriptive format for the hypergraph elements as I find raw triples to be a bit messy for this. In this…